~ A Life in Wellies

The Cutting Patch Update

My cut flower patch is such an important part of my allotment. Last year was my first year and my ideas about using some of my plot for flowers were greeted with some scepticism by the established allotment growers who couldn’t understand why I’d wasted so much of the plot on putting in paths, let alone devoting soil to growing flowers instead of potatoes and onions. However, it seems like the flower bug is catching and I won’t be the only one this year with blooms brightening up the site. A couple of the older growers were asking me where I bought my seed from, so I passed around a few seed catalogues and dished out some packets of seed I had collected last autumn. Then on a visit at the weekend I was chatting to two of them and they were telling me all about their plans for cut flowers!! Not such a strange idea after all.

My own patch is taking shape with the biennials and autumn sown annuals coming into their own. The much-anticipated flowering of the sweet williams has just started in the last week and I’ve been able to fill a good 2 buckets full of sweet rocket, honesty, alchemilla, orlaya and the last of the stocks.

Yesterday I got up to the plot early in the hope I could get a lot done before it got so hot that I started to wilt. I had to make two trips with the wheelbarrow, transporting little plants from home to the plot so that the first big plant out could commence. In went some annual asters, daucus ‘Black Knight’, white antirrhinums, didiscus, some pinks grown from cuttings taken in March and some bupleurum. There were also some small plants of lettuce, beetroot and chard for the edible part of the plot.

Sweet williams

Still at home and waiting for the second round of planting out are zinnias, rudbeckias, cosmos, sunflowers, cornflowers, gaura, dill, gypsophila and a few more larkspur. Oh, and two dahlias. It’ll be touch and go as to whether I can fit all this in. There was quite a lot of standing around with hands on hips looking thoughtful, on Sunday, wondering whether I’d had the garden equivalent of piling my plate too high at a buffet because my eyes were bigger than my stomach. My imagination is certainly bigger than any available land I have but I’m sure with a bit of jiggling around I can do it. That’s squeezing plants in and not me doing some strange dance, by the way.

Cut flower posy

The great thing about gardening is that each year is different and new opportunities open up. I’m still very much learning just how much I can cram into a small space and for how long I can get the season to last. Plans are already being formulated for which biennials to sow later next month and which hardy annuals I’ll sow this autumn. But, for the moment, I’m enjoying this year’s first pickings from my cut flower patch.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Post navigation

31 thoughts on “The Cutting Patch Update”

Lovely to read about your cutting patch. I planned to get one started this year but what with the extremes of weather progress has been a bit lacking. Your lovely pics have inspired me to get on with it!

Thanks, Flaneur. Less lawn and more flowers, that’s what I say. Although I know you’ve probably had enough of digging. Once you’ve got the ground prepared and if you sow hardy annuals direct into the ground a cut flower patch is quite easy to maintain. Although it’s surprising how time consuming the dead-heading is!!

But yes, no more large-scale digging for the foreseeable future for me. I love my garden, but I love my back even more… It will be much easier to get stuff done in the garden once my husband returns, though; it’s so much more fun to do heavy work when you’re doing it with somebody else.

Hi Flaneur, A bad back can be so debilitating, so as little digging as possible sounds good to me. I managed to get hubby to move lots of barrow loads of manure at the weekend, which is one of my least favourite jobs. It certainly makes it more enjoyable to be able to share the work and the sense of creating something together.

My trouble is that I’m probably stronger than the Flâneur Husband… So I tend to take the heaviest chores, but I guess that wouldn’t have been a problem if I had had somebody there to do all the carting around of soil and compost so I just had to dig it.

The Flâneur Husband moves back to Denmark tomorrow (has it really been two years already?), and I’ve been to see a chiropractor today who worked wonders in her own sadistic way. You know what they’re like; “this won’t hurt at all CRACK!”…

Wonderful colour combinations in your cut flower posy, you certainly are organised with your sowing! I’ve always said that I prefer the flowers in the garden, but I think you might manage to convert me!!

Do watch that alchemilla. With me, it spreads and seeds everywhere. You can have too much of a good thing! Cut it hard back immediately after flowering to stop it seeding. It’s quite tough enough to come away again rapidly.

Hi Kininvie, I generally cut it back anyway so that I get a second flush of flowers. It does self seed but as long as I get to the young plants they are easy enough to dig out. Will remember to keep on top of it though, especially at the plot. Although saying that, I said I’d do that with my chives and forgot and now I have chives appearing everywhere. Still at least they are a tasty weed!! Thanks for the reminder, WW :-)

Your cut flower combinations are so beautiful. I never get around to cutting our flowers (except for the sweetpeas, so they won’t go to seed and then to sleep). These lovely photographs will no doubt coax the secateurs out of my back pocket more often…

Hi Garden Correspondent, Thank you. I love having flowers in the house but was reluctant to pick them from the garden, didn’t want to end up with bare patches, that’s why I ended up devoting some of the allotment to them. That way I don’t feel guilty and I can snip away.

I had always wanted a cutting garden but I actually could just cut many of my flowers that grow around the garden…I just love the lovely arrangements so far…I adore sweet william as well and they are just blooming here too

Hi Lyn, I’m not sure that’s what some of them would call me!! There are a couple who think flowers shouldn’t be allowed. It’ll be nice to see a bit more colour at the allotments and a few more bees buzzing around.

I bet your house smells wonderful, and looks cheerful too with all those flowers in it. I’m full of intentions every year to create a flower patch, but it just never seems to come off, I’m just not organised enough. This year I was planning on direct sowing seed to cut down on the work but with all the rain we’ve had, I haven’t even dug a patch over yet. Oh well, I might manage to grow a few flowers for the house, we’ll see.

Hi Jo, A small bunch of the stocks especially can fill a whole room with scent. It has been a difficult year. Very few of my direct sown seeds have worked. I’ve had to frantically resow in trays, indoors. Some flowers aren’t going to bloom until much later in the year but sometimes there’s not much you can do about the weather.

What lovely flowers! I have a teeny tiny cuttings patch in the kitchen garden which is doing rather nicely, though am reluctant to cut them down as they look so nice!! Lunacy I know. I sowed my Amni Visnaga and Majus last autumn, though may consider not doing that again, as they are towering above everything else. The lack of rain, heat etc, has not helped the others to catch up, but I’d prefer to see them all coming up in similar time frame.

Before I started this garden I had planned to have a cuttings garden area, but somehow the vegetables took over. I hate cutting flowers from the borders, which is silly really now that they are so full. It is still something I would love to do but I also worry that it would be very time consuming. i wish I lived near you to be a recipient of your excess blooms! Christina

I am impressed you have so much in flower! I have been trying to run a cutting garden for a couple of years now and find it is weighted heavily towards summer proper. This is probably because I have a lot of annuals in it which I sow in spring. This year I had quite a lot of tulips specifically for cutting and that worked well for April and May. I wonder if I need to go in for more biennials or autumn sown annuals? Can you cut from your patch from spring right through? That is my aim but not as easy as it sounds! Love your posies, just perfect.

Hi Elizabeth, I only have a small patch on my allotment so have small amounts of lots of different plants. My autumn sown annuals and biennials have all done well this year despite the topsy-turvy weather. I’ve been able to pick something every week since mid March, although only small amounts. It’s only been in the last 3 weeks that the quantity has gone up.

Lovely cut flower combinations, and I particularly like the shot with the bucket – beautiful…. and sweet williams, too. I’m going to go and shout at mine right now, because they’re not doing much of anything… gr…

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.